


help me hold onto you

by birdsongs



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Coming of Age, First Kiss, Gay Panic, Haikyuu & Taylor Swift Week 2020, Kageyama Tobio is Bad at Feelings, Kageyama Tobio-centric, M/M, Song: The Archer (Taylor Swift), Songfic, i cant believe that last one is a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26531047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsongs/pseuds/birdsongs
Summary: Because there is fragility, and then there is this. Shimmering solid and tethered truth.Or, Hinata Shoyou helps Kageyama Tobio learn how to grow up.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 36
Kudos: 120





	help me hold onto you

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic! Of course it's for kghn. And of course it's for HQ x Taylor Swift week. I recommend you listen to Taylor Swift's The Archer while reading this, partly because I think it is actually quite relevant to Kageyama Tobio and his character, and partly because it is just a lovely song and you should always stream Taylor Swift.  
> 

I. _But who could stay?_

A volleyball arcs from his hands and through the air, yellow and blue stripes blurring across the gym. The curvature of its path is smooth and seamless and satisfying, and Tobio thinks to himself how the thrill of a set will never get old, no matter how worn or scrubbed his bones might become. It’s a familiar sight, yes, a volleyball cutting through air hot and quick like a knife, and also one that he’s memorized since the day he first tripped into volleyball camp the summer of 2nd grade, but it’s a sight that has never lost its sweetness, never been an ounce less sublime.

He steals a glance at Hinata, limbs lithe and palm outstretched, face warm and bright and exhilarated. Something funny flips in his stomach, breathing is suddenly a conscious effort, and Tobio finds himself unable to look away. Like, literally incapable. The helplessness of this feeling petrifies him.

“Didya see that?” Hinata preens, blindly unaware of the current pandemonium rampaging through Tobio's mindscape. “Don’t tell me you weren’t looking!”

Kageyama Tobio is just a sixteen-year-old boy who loves volleyball. He has no time nor desire to attempt to unpack strange and curious sensations, and he feels unreasonably and impossibly afraid that Shoyou can see right through him. So, he scrabbles for known things.

A vehement glare. “Of course I was looking, you idiot.”

Hinata holds up his hand, glinting pink from impact. Smiles at it, starry and victorious. “Uwahh! Kageyama, the ball was like _swoosh_ , and I was like _WHAM_! And then it went _fwinggg_ … and—”

* * *

Tobio loves falling asleep to storms. The sound of the rain beating on his roof like a billion tiny drums, the rhythm roaring like a typhoon—it feels like he’s crashing into a foaming, ferocious wave. It feels like a lullaby, melodic with its chaos. He supposes that in itself is sort of a contradiction (he learned the word in English earlier today, from Yachi, who forced him to repeat after her after he mispronounced it five different times, the syllables drawn out long and slow, _con-tra-dic-tion_ ), to find the violent humming beyond his window so strangely soothing, but maybe it has more to do with the fact that from his bed, tucked under his covers, he is untouchable. He likes the illusion of control he has, invulnerable to the thunderclaps and cloudbursts that rage outside the sanctity of his room.

He remembers Hinata once told him offhandedly that he loved waking up to sunrises. Morning dew ghosting the cherry blossom petals outside of his bedroom window, the promising glint of a new day peeking through the mountain tops—Hinata had said it felt like he was unfurling towards the sky, arms outstretched and face upturned. Truthfully, Tobio thinks that it’s straight-up weird for someone to like the sound of their alarm clock in the morning, to not mind the burn in their calves on morning bike rides to school. But Hinata has always been pretty weird. Hinata clings to new beginnings and brighter horizons like it’s a familiar friend.

Trust is a foreign concept to Tobio; he doesn’t know what it’s like to look at the unknown and charge forth fearlessly, recklessly. What lies beyond the veil? Where do you go after failure?

* * *

Kageyama Tobio is a boy known by many other names, most involuntarily, and only few appreciated: brat, sniveling little kouhai, and Tobio-chan when it’s Oikawa. Number nine if he’s on the court. On occasion, genius or demon from match onlookers. King of the Court by his Kitagawa First teammates or Tsukkishima. Just Tobio for his parents, for Miwa, for his grandfather. And now,

_You’re a goody-two shoes, aren’t ya?_

Hooded eyelids, a trendy undercut, and a drawling Kanto twang: Miya Atsumu haunts him.

Ever since coming to Karasuno, he’s been careful not to be selfish, careful to tamp down a compulsion for control. Ever since the All Japan training camp, he’s been in a perpetual funk. Even his favorite brand of milk is starting to taste funny.

_Goody-two shoes._

A restless twitching under his skin, a tap-tap-tap of his fingers against his thigh, a punctuated thrumming in his ribcage; it’s not like Miya was wrong—no, it gnaws at Tobio so relentlessly because of its acute accuracy, a frustratingly undeniable home truth. Karasuno was the air catching under his wings, but also the burden weighing on his back. Tobio's tosses are threaded with a subtle, nearly imperceptible uncertainty. An insecurity rooted not in irrational phobia, but intimate experience. That easy they come, and easy they go. That one day, no one will be there.

During their practice match with Date Tech, they are losing, fumble after fumble after fumble, and Tobio can hear something unhinge from inside of himself, anguished and frantic. Like a string pulled taut and plucked, he is vibrating on a frequency so high that there’s really no surprise at all that the veneer snaps.

He honest-to-god regrets it—the words that launch from him like arrows, quick and sharp and gone before he has the chance to take them back: “I…I know my tosses are good! So please, score more often!”

Azumane stares, taken aback and mouth parted. The entire team is peering at him, even Date Tech has stopped in their tracks to gawk, and an insidious chill begins to settle on Tobio's shoulders. “Look at that,” Tsukkishima hums. “It’s the return of the King.”

_King: a person or thing regarded as the finest or most important._

_King: to act in an unpleasantly superior and domineering manner._

_King: Kageyama Tobio, no holds barred._

King—it’s turning frostbite out of his veins, hairline cracks blooming in icy fractals across his bones, the hardwood floor between him and the rest of Karasuno splintering into a terrifyingly vast and dizzyingly deep mess of a chasm, and suddenly he’s afraid, he’s afraid, he’s afraid. It’s resentment and it’s hunger and it’s fury, it’s guilt, it’s bitter and acrid and aching and unforgiving. It's churning against a flooding avalanche of sputtered insults and middle school memories, _Move faster! Jump Higher! Match my tosses, if you want to win!_

He folds over in a bow so sharp his neck cricks with whiplash, chokes and croaks out an “I’m sorr—”

“I’ve been thinking,” Hinata steps forward, head held high and words defiant. Cutting through air hot and quick like a knife. “What’s wrong with him being the king again?”

And just like that, the chill is no more, the chasm is closed, the avalanche is gone.

It clicks into place and something broken begins to mend behind his sternum, stitch by stitch. Tobio realizes—helplessly, gratefully—that Hinata Shoyou is a person that burns brighter and flies faster than the sun itself. He is a wish upon a star, a penny in the pool, a desperate prayer at the eleventh hour; he is the promise that someone better will come to find him, fulfilled.

Tobio knows this: Hinata has always had the uncanny power to see people for their soul, refracting ugly into beautiful like the most jagged parts of themselves were shiny rather than sharp, like stubborn was just resolve, like damnation was nothing but another challenge.

It goes unspoken but not unheard: _I fashioned a towel into a crown for you, I am resting it atop your head like a wreath of laurels, I know who you are and I still love you._

_I will hit your tosses all the same._

* * *

It is the morning of the seniors’ graduation, and Tobio is getting ready in the bathroom, right about to squeeze a pea of minty paste onto his toothbrush when, suddenly, he pauses. He squints at his reflection in the mirror. Studies it.

Sometimes the feeling is so tight he thinks he might burst, so strong that he almost doesn’t believe it’s real. Sometimes it’s soft like a whisper, gentle like a trail of fingertips against his palm, as breathy as the creeping blushes of dawn. He can’t name it, and, truthfully, Tobio has never really been good with figuring out his emotions—but it does remind him of shared meat buns and locker room laughter, of races up sloping grassy knolls and sleepy bus rides. He secretly cherishes the feeling in all its shapes and forms, and despite not knowing quite exactly what it is, he nests it within his heart.

Kageyama Tobio is not well-versed in murky things like the abstraction of identity, but that morning, in his bathroom, still dressed in his pajamas, he comes to the realization that he is gay.

* * *

II. _You could stay_

Tobio kind of hates the summer. It’s not that he doesn’t like warmth, or that he can’t appreciate a sunny day when he sees one, but the cloying humidity and sweat-soaked t-shirt that’s starting to stick to his back are decidedly unpleasant.

He is a winter baby, after all, so maybe he’s just been naturally inclined since birth to prefer the cold. He’d much rather feel the kiss of chill against his cheeks on pale morning runs than the blistering burns he always gets after forgetting to apply sunscreen onto the bridge of his nose. Miwa would kill him if she found out—she was always going on about how important it was to take care of his complexion.

Still, there’s no where he’d rather be than where he is right now; the Karasuno gym, in the middle of August, serving volleyballs again and again and again until the floor is a sea of red and white and green leather. He’s exhausted, his forehead is slick with sweat, his arms ache, and it’s too damn hot. But, he takes another ball, lifts his arm, and serves. Watches the ball carve out its own orbit, and the familiarity soothes him.

“How long have you been here?”

Tobio whips around. He thought he had been alone, but there Hinata is, leaning against the doorway, arms folded, and wearing the blue Way of the Ace t-shirt he bought at nationals. The bridge of Hinata’s nose is not blistered or red or sunburnt; instead, there is a smattering dust of freckles. This new detail intrigues him, and he almost forgets that Hinata asked him a question.

“Since three,” he manages to answer.

Hinata’s eyes widen, glowing golden. “Since three? You’re kidding. It’s nearly 8. Geez, Kageyama, you really don’t have a social life, huh?”

“Shut up.” A pause. “What are you even doing here?” It’s their summer break, and Hinata lives too far away from school to have just casually stopped by.

“I could ask you the same thing!”

“I asked first.”

Hinata glares. “I lost my volleyball.”

“You lost your volleyball?”

“That’s what I just said. Stupid Kageyama.”

Tobio feels utterly consumed with the urge to sock Hinata in the face. To break the freckled nose. “You’re a fucking dumbass. How did you lose it?”

Hinata has the good sense to finally look sheepish. “I accidentally pitched it over the side of the mountain near my house, and… well…” He scratches the back of his neck. “I went searching for it, but I figured it might be easier to… to get another one from school.”

Aha. “So you came here to steal,” Tobio scoffs.

“Hey! Not steal! I’m not a thief!” Hinata protests, fists clenching. “Just…borrow.”

“Figures you’d lose a volleyball by being an idiot, as usual.”

Hinata doesn’t seem to think this warrants a response, instead marching over to stand next to him. “Toss to me.”

“…Okay.”

* * *

It’s nice. Running with Hinata. Even with rain cascading in torrential sheets around them, even despite a clammy wetness seeping into their skin. This thought makes him feel inexplicably shy, and he looks down at his feet, watching water trail in rivulets along the slope of the hill and towards the gutters; it’s after practice, they are propelling towards Coach Ukai’s convenience store, and he is thinking of curry buns (as one often does). But maybe he is also thinking a little bit about Hinata, about fragility, about where he has come from and where he is now.

Fragility, like his mother’s favorite set of fine china. Fragility, like a flame on a windy day. Fragility, like the hesitation between fingertip and air and ball.

Middle school Tobio had been a creature of his lonesome, days spent nebulous and quiet and solitary in a lather, rinse, and repeat: school, volleyball, sleep, school, volleyball, sleep. There is no room for meat buns when one is busy trying to fend off a coup, when his most fearsome opponent is not another school but instead a wobbly balancing act in teamwork, when nearly all of his truest enemies had first started out friends. He’d be lying if he said it hadn’t bothered him—for all that Tobio likes the view from the top of his carefully constructed control tower, volleyball is a team sport.

If one were to hold up both Kageyama Tobio (15) Kitagawa First and Kageyama Tobio (17) Karasuno High School against a window pane, use the sunlight to trace the outlines of every difference between the _before_ and the _now_ , maybe they wouldn’t find much incongruity. He _is_ still Kageyama Tobio, and life for him has always been about getting from point A to point B, from one side of the court to the other. Life is still the lather, rinse, and repeat.

But, personally, Tobio likes to think that there are a few more pitstops and pockets now in the journey between A and B. He likes to call it trust, or, at the very least, belonging.

He knows that his passion for volleyball isn’t so much about his teammates as it is about the victory of the next point, the smack of the ball against his hands, the burn in his chest after a glorious set. He knows this. But having a team that works with him instead of against him—it makes daily practices feel just a little easier, the early morning runs just a little less tired, and he wonders how he ever forgot that a team of six is much stronger than a team of one.

So, while Tobio really isn’t one for quiet introspection or sweeping epiphanies, he does understand the significance in racing against Hinata to get meat buns, and there is a quiet warmth fluttering in his chest.

He’s nearly out of breath when they near the store, the fluorescent glow from behind the glass sliding doors like a beacon amidst the rain. Hinata’s steps pick up pace beside him, and the redhead laughs. “Last one there is paying!”

Tobio breaks out into a sprint and forges ahead, determined to win not only for his pride, but because the two of them have always been chasing a fixed point on an unfixed plane; because they are constant, like the way the sun rises to greet the dark face of the mountain every morning; because they are dauntless, like the way two crows take ceaseless flight towards the horizon. Because there is fragility, and then there is _this_. Shimmering solid and tethered truth.

What lies beyond the veil? What comes after failure?

Tobio thinks maybe the answers lie in the way Hinata beats him to the doors and smugly waves two triumphant meat buns in his face, in the way their eternal scorecard tips, 298-299, and he can’t find it within himself to be too bothered at all.

* * *

“Do you think we’re ever going to get to nationals again?” Hinata asks him, quietly, so that only he can hear.

To anyone else on the team, maybe, it would be an innocuous question—but Tobio knows better.

They are riding home in the very back seats of the bus, the sky outside the window a dusty pink and wispy orange, and Tsukkishima and Yamaguchi are asleep across the aisle. There is a hovering, tired sadness that sits on Karasuno’s shoulders; they have just lost their second match of the Summer Inter-High preliminaries by the skin of their teeth, and the hope of Nationals has painfully slipped from their fingers. Tears have not yet been shed, but there’s still a prickle in their throats, a tightness behind all of their eyes. Tobio has spent the past 30 minutes staring into his lap, silent and somber and sorrowful.

Tobio knows better—Hinata isn’t so much asking him a question as he is giving him a reminder, an ultimatum, that Kageyama Tobio and Hinata Shoyou are partners as much as they are rivals; a setter and his spiker, marked for the glorious summit and their fate a forgone conclusion, and _so Tobio better not forget it._

This is the best way they know how to comfort each other, with a challenge. This warms him, and instead of dwelling on his missed serves or analyzing their prospects for nationals or thinking about what training arc will find him next, he wastes a few seconds wondering how Hinata looks a lot like the sunset behind him; cheeks rosy, eyes blazing, and framed by a halo of orange hair.

Kageyama Tobio is a braver boy than he used to be, but he still has a bad habit of scrabbling for known things, so he answers Hinata not with words but with a challenge of his own:

He leans forward and kisses him.

It’s sloppy, and he kind of misses a little, landing at first on the corner of Hinata’s mouth (which disgruntles him, because Tobio has always prided himself on precision) and their teeth clink and they’re both still a bit sweaty from volleyball so it all tastes a bit salty, but Tobio doesn’t think he minds much. Because he is kissing Hinata, and, more importantly, _Hinata is kissing him back_ , and he is deeply aware of every point of contact between their lips, and this feels good, although certainly fleshy and a little strange, but really really really _good_ , and a hand pulls on his pant leg and he thinks he could maybe do this kissing thing forever—a small whine escapes Hinata’s mouth and they both pull apart at the same time, eyes wide.

Tobio is dazed.

Hinata is gaping at him, flushed with disbelief and confusion and—and maybe something else, a something that makes Tobio feel stupidly hopeful. “You like me?” Hinata whispers loudly, looking just as bewildered as Tobio feels.

Tobio blinks.

“Yes,” he whispers back.

Maybe he should be surprised at how easily the word tumbles out from him, unbidden and reflexive—but he really isn’t surprised at all. Because he thinks he’s always known, since the moment the two of them met in that middle school bathroom, that their fates would be etched together into the concrete, that Hinata Shoyou would change his life, and that when they are together they are invincible.

Hinata squints at him, eyebrows scrunched. Studies him. “…Okay.” A pause. Then:

Hinata leans forward and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a kudos or review if you feel so inclined! thanks so much for reading i love you!!! if you want, you can find me on twitter @kagskawa
> 
> ALSO: a special shoutout to my lovely shan, @curvatures on AO3, who is the most wonderful person ever and helped beta-read this fic.


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